By Ganesh Saili
Last week, my friend Anmol Berry (or Tata, as we called him) came all the way from Australia to say hello and a final goodbye. After finishing college, he grew wings and flew to distant lands, while I sprouted roots. Shuffling around the college office, I realised that day the die had been cast: henceforth, Landour was where my life would unfold.
‘New teacher?’ short and stout Jagdish Babu asked. ‘Date of birth?’
Taking a glance at my school leaving certificate, he noted the date, and added sixty years. Like a soothsayer, he intoned: ‘That’s the day you retire.’
And he was right, as correct as a broken clock which gets the time right twice a day. Quietly, without fanfare, old age has snuck up on me. I have joined the ranks of the half-pay pensioners of the world.
Pic courtesy: author
The morning after found me all dressed up with nowhere to go. Force of habit and all that.
‘Going somewhere?’ teased Tulika, our firstborn, as she gave me a cup of tea.
‘I’m off to my desk!’ I lied through my teeth. Kind girl that she is, she didn’t press further.
Though I admit, I am not tired, or even re-treaded; merely retired. Whenever I need expert advice, I chat with myself, but this time I use the ‘dial-a-friend’ option, with interesting results.
‘Hold on,’ the fellow snaps. ‘I will ring you back!’
But he never does. ‘Ah! He must be busy!’ I console myself.
At times like these, how I wish growing old had taken a tad longer. It did for Balwant, a clerk at the State Bank. You would have found him there every working day. He was there all his life, steadfastly refusing promotions or transfers, hanging on for many years until he had become as permanent a fixture as those old brass switches fixed on the walls of the Bank that were hazardous to touch on damp, rainy days.
Balwant’s colleagues decided to give him a farewell. It was anything but grand – I saw it first-hand, our genial Bank Manager, Vishal Ohri, having asked me to attend the after-office-hours celebrations, a simple chips-and-chai affair. From the tenor of the farewell speeches, one could easily be deluded into mistaking it for a welcome party for a fresher who was joining the bank. It was not a run-of-the-mill get-rid party to honour some over-the-hill fuddy-duddy being pitchforked out, all trussed up in polite smiles and semi-sincere platitudes. Chinese whispers flew thick and fast around the room:
‘Imagine the loan counter minus Balwant?’
‘How do we carry on without him?’
‘What is going to happen from tomorrow with him gone?’
Trouble was, Balwant heard them, and took them to heart.
Months later, visiting the Book Depot opposite the bank, I bumped into his son who groaned: ‘My father insists on dressing up every morning to head to the bank, where he sits all day long on a bench in the veranda; that’s where I have to go to fetch him home every evening.’
Thankfully, because I work from home, no one has to fetch me. Friends reassure me: ‘Age is just a number. Sixty is the new forty these days, Ganesh!’
How well I know that those twinges in the hinges are not growing-up pains, especially after I wake up on the wrong side of the bed, Granddaughter Niharika suggests: ‘Nana! We’ll give you a spin in the dryer! It’ll rid you of wrinkles, and might shrink you a few sizes too.’
But even the thought of spinning makes me giddy. I chase after her in mock outrage, stubbing my toe against a table leg in the process. She gets away.
When I finally get down to scribbling, having bolted the door to prevent interruptions, I realise that the Muses too have vanished.
I sigh despondently, and peer over those green hedges to tune in to the Greyhead’s Club. After three score years you might not be able to choose your own music, but the last dance is always yours!
Goodbye, Tata! My friend. We shall meet again in the hereafter.
(Ganesh Saili, born and home-grown in the hills, belongs to those select few whose words are illustrated by their pictures. Author of two dozen books, some translated into twenty languages, his work has found recognition worldwide.)
